One fine day, I thought of improving my profile by doing a foreign language course. Out of the many options that I had - French, German, Japanese etc I settled for German Language. After a few visits to some language training institutes, I ventured into Max Muller Bhavan, Bangalore. Even before I had spoken to the person in charge, Ms. Jayanthi, I had decided to join there! Just by looking at the place you could swear about their professionalism. It has a well stocked library of books, German magazines, newspapers and not to forget, movies and videos in VCDs and DVDs. Neat classrooms with well furnished equipments, well trained teaching staff, a German cafe (Café Max) and loads of recommendations left me with little choice! The course fees for the weekend batch that I have joined is Rs. 8500/- (About 145 Euro) for the A1 level.

Good and positive vibes, from people and places draws you towards them. Germany, as I know is very open to Ayurveda and Indian culture. It respects both modern technology and the ancient knowledge of civilizations. We have reasonably good business and some very loyal and fantastic customers from Germany. I hope this course helps me to interact with them better and maybe lead me to do business there.

More on Max Muller Bhavan after I have attended a few classes! Wish me luck - its been a long time since I studied!

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I got a lot of requests from a lot of readers to put up my pictures. Finally, last week I decided to put up a video of AyurShop and me on Youtube and link it here. This video says a lot about my company and what we do.

Hope you like it!

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Of a lot of experiences in my Ayurveda business, this one is definitely worth a blog entry! We do face stiff customs issues in a few countries and paperwork for some that takes us to the limits of our patience.  Norway, however seems to be different! Not much paperwork, but they just don’t allow Ayurveda or herbal medicine in the country.

This would have been OK with me too; but for the fact that a Norwegian can import small quantities of illegal drugs for personal use, but not Ayurveda! This was informed to me by one of our customers who finally could not get her products! Frustrating as it is, AyurShop has quiet a few orders and customers registered from Norway - none of whom can actually get their products! I am still surprised as to why cant the government of Norway and other nations allow herbal products, which are branded, sealed, properly labeled and made by respectable companies.

If anybody has even a vague idea of getting products to Norway or convincing the customs do let me know. If there is anything wrong in what is mentioned here, please feel free to rectify. I have not yet done any major research on this as of now but will follow it up strongly sometime. I do need supporters for this! May all be healthy and fine!

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Phew! Its been very hectic, the last 15 days or so. I had a news portal to be launched - AyurvedNews.com and the Indian version of my Ayurveda Store - AyurShop.in. Work took 25 hours a day and I still managed to squeeze a few hours for food, sleep and my Sunday morning games! All that I could not do was to update my blog! Here I am now, free to write what strikes me most.

What strikes me the most at the moment is that after a forth night of activity, wheres the result? Another few projects launched, but where’s the result?! Day and night worked for what? Thought about it for some time and got the answer:

It’s not what you start that gives you the results; its the sustained, sincere efforts and interest in what you do that drives results! What say?

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AyurvedNews.com - our dedicated news portal for Ayurveda has been launched. The news portal will also cover topics such as Yoga, Panchakarma, Meditation, Health tips, Government News, Product Launches, Reviews, Interviews, Ayurveda Company News apart from a host of information on such subjects. Alternate therapy news which have relevance to Ayurveda will also be featured.

Visitors can expect to find a neat and simple interface with facilities for searching, RSS feeds, registration and giving their views and comments on each article. One is also free to submit his/her news, story or even complaints on the site! AyurvedNews.com focuses to bridge the gap between the traditional Ayurvedic companies and the new technology enabled news seeker.

Do feel free to give me feedback on the site and pen down your suggestions here.

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Last week, my server was hacked by this crackers child! Don’t know why losers like him have to spoil innocent bloggers websites to convey their irrelevant thoughts. There are better ways to convey his anti-Bush sentiments. Ask any democrat and he’ll tell you!

Anyways for those looking for a cure to heir hacked Wordpress installations please Get Cure for Crackers Child here. Basically, this chap / group rewrites all files having the word “index” in them. So, one is simply not able to proceed as all index.php, index.html, index_whatever is overwritten. Thankfully, they are not qualified enough to hack the database, so all the posts, comments, settings, categories etc are safe. Quiet simply, if you replace all the index files, it should work! Or as the link puts it “Basically just delete all your wordpress files (backup things like plugins, themes, smilies etc) and then re-upload all the wordpress files onto your server. this will not delet any posts, comments or pages as these are all stored on your database.” BTW, replacing all the files works for any website & not just those on Wordpress. Just keep your database, themes, ads etc settings correct in the replacement files.
Check this out for an interesting read on crackers_child.

Check this for the amount of crap the world has to put up with due to crackers child.

The Guru in me speaketh - Thou shall backup regularly! And if thou gets hands on thy hacker, thou shall use your legs and fists too!

Let me know if you have more on this and permanent cures if any. Vikas Sharma.

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Being in the web hosting & domain name registration industry, I have been asked this many times over by people from various backgrounds - novice bloggers to seasoned experts. Not because its my business, but due to many good reasons I recommend it. The most prominent advantage & reasons being the following which I will elaborate upon in my later posts:

• It gives you your own identity.
• You are not on the mercy of the blogs provider and fear of getting your blog deleted or suspended because of something you did or didn’t do!
• Having your own independent blog site gives you more options to make money and earn online.
• The best blog software packages are open source and hence free and totally customizable! Your cost towards the same is next to zero.
• The cost involved towards domain name registration and web space is very less, that too can be recovered within a month or two by a basic blogger! (PS: Ask me for all such requirement you have!)
• You have the freedom to add a forum, shopping cart, create a community or do nearly just about anything you can think up from your own domain or blog!
• You can customize just about anything on your blog, the look, feel etc by themes & plugins, which are available free and again open source for you to modify.
• And finally as Mike put in “if you are actively working to get back links (and you should be) you will want those to go to a domain that you control. If you create a high PR site you have an asset you can sell.”
• A few more advantages, I cant think of now as I have started sneezing due to dust allergy!

Well, anyways if you get more advantages on having your own blog to add please feel free to put it in the comments for the community. Questions and controversies are welcome too!

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When I started www.sharmasblog.com, there were a lot of things going on in my mind. What to write? When to write?! et all. As I write this tenth blog post, I am encouraged by a few things:

• A small amount of money I made!
• I finally got something creative to do apart from my business!
• Got an informal place to catch up with my customers and friends.
• I get to help people to make money online, genuinely.
• Interact with a band of bloggers and be called one!

There are a lot more advantages I find out of blogging, but I wouldn’t want to pump all of them here in one go and take a toll on your patience! In fact I am planning to go full steam with what I intended to do part-time. Me thinks I should start a section on the city I live & love - Bangalore! Also in the pipeline is a section of forwarded mails and SMS! Generally, they are an annoyance, but some of them are really good, encouraging or just entertaining!

Cheers!
Vikas Sharma

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Dr. Subha, a fellow ‘orkut-tan ‘ happened to ask me about the Ayurveda companies listed on our site. The conversation may be useful to a lot more people. Here it is:

Subha:
Hi Vikas, thanks for your reply. I browsed both the web sites. I feel you should get the medicine list of some more standard companies also, like AVP, Coibatore and Kotakkal Arya Vaidya Sala, SNA Oushadhasala, Vaidyaratnam Oushadhashala, etc. These are some companies whose medicines are really excellent and have their own standards and patent preparations also.

My Reply:

Dear Subha,
Thanks for the genuine concern about Ayurveda companies. You will be happy to note that we have invited over 200 such firms to join hands with us including the firms mentioned by you! But as you can understand, we can put up only those companies which have responded to us! In fact there is no charges for listing and sales of any GMP certified company’s products on our site; still the response is slow. I personally attribute it to the lack of ‘technology awareness’ in this industry! Anyway do re-send regular invitations to the firms and some of them respond late. Once they do, you will surely find them on our site!

For the commercial aspects of our business, we need Ayurveda companies to respond and for the non-commercial and seva aspects of our business we need the support of Ayurveda doctors and the public to stand by us!

regards,
Vikas Sharma

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